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DVD Hardware or Software Decoder

I am configuring a new PC I am about to buy. It is going to be based on 733MHz Pentium and will most likely have 32 MB GeForce 256 video card. This PC is intended to be used by a student, it will be with him in his dorm, and he wants a DVD to be able to watch a movie on occasion. My question is: should I include DVD hardware decoder card, or with 733Mhz Pentium and a good video card it is really would not make a difference?

I've seen a PIII 733 with software decoder for DVD and it looks pretty good but not as good as my PII 350 with hardware decoder. Most notably in high motion scenes on the PIII you will notice a slight loss in frame rate. But for the occassional movie it is fine.

Originally posted by MOF:I've seen a PIII 733 with software decoder for DVD and it looks pretty good but not as good as my PII 350 with hardware decoder. Most notably in high motion scenes on the PIII you will notice a slight loss in frame rate. But for the occassional movie it is fine.

I have a geforce card and also a Hollywood based dvd card.
And I would say that yes the dvd card is better than the geforce at picture quality and also speed. But only if your quite picky about these things.
To use the dvd card to display movies on your monitor it uses a pass thru cable from the geforce, which lowers the quality of the image to your monitor.Whether your playing movies or not!
The dvd card cannot handle the high refresh rates that the geforce is capable of producing.
What I do is only use the dvd card to send a signal to my widescreen tv, using an s-video cable. And ignore the pass thru cable altogether.
If I want to watch a dvd on my monitor I use WinDVD which performs very well with a geforce.
The cpu you are using is plenty fast enough to get good results from using Windvd.
So for occasional use I wouldnt bother. If you do get a dvd card then I can reccomend the Hollywood card for good performance and price.

On a friends computer we saw the differences between his dxr3 card and PowerDVD, no differences at all, video quality was perfect and smooth in both modes. Now he use dxr3 card to watch movies in his TV, and PowerDVD to watch them in his monitor.

BTW, he has a PIII 450MHz, 128MB of RAM, and an i810 video card.

If you were in a world full of crazy people, who would be the crazy person?OTCentral

If I buy a hollywood decoder card will I be able to use its tv out for more than watching DVD movies? I have a lot of Divx movies and other formats of movies on my hard drive so could I watch them on my tv also? Thanks

Jared

Finally got the 600e and the Global win VOS32. Now I need some good ram...

I've got the PC-DVD setup where the DVD decoder uses the feature connector on my TNT2 card and there is no signal degradation because there is no double looping of the video signal. Pity they don't make the Lux Sonor card anymore, it is a great setup and works well. On my PII 350 while playing a DVD at 1024x768 fullscreen the processor usage is at 5%!